


in the eye of the hurricane

by empressearwig



Category: Hidden Legacy Series - Ilona Andrews
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:51:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5473487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/pseuds/empressearwig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I know that your head is killing you and you're going to be stupid and brave and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the eye of the hurricane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anticyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/gifts).



"Nevada?"

She blinks her eyes open, slowly, groggily. She blinks them back closed when water drips into them from above. Her head is killing her and she's cold and she doesn't have to suffer that indignity too.

Hands cup her cheeks, stroke along her temples. "Nevada."

Rogan. She remembers them standing in the rain together, fighting with mages from House Shaw. The wind had whipped around them fiercely, from the incoming hurricane, or maybe they'd sent weather mages along just to make a bad situation worse. She wasn't sure which. Something had come hurtling towards them, from them or the storm or--

"You have to open your eyes," Rogan says. "You could have a concussion. I'm pretty sure that I'm not supposed to let you sleep."

"I thought you had medical training in the army," she says, forcing herself to try to open her eyes again. When she does, she sees Rogan looking down at her. Too evident concern is written across his face and in the gentleness with which his hands still touch her face. She forces herself into a sitting position, wincing at the throbbing in her head. She tries for wit, knowing she will fall far short of the mark. "Shouldn't you know?"

"I know that your head is killing you and you're going to be stupid and brave and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop you," he says. He helps her sit, tucks pillows more comfortably against her back.

She looks around the room. She's in a bed she doesn't recognize, surrounded by walls that she doesn't know. She hopes desperately that this isn't a sign of a concussion. "Where are we?"

"I don't know," he says. A brief flash of anger crosses his face. "What do you remember?"

She tries to think back. "We were fighting House Shaw," she says. "The storm was getting worse and they were helping it along. Something came flying towards us. You tried to push me down. Then nothing." She pauses. "Again, I ask, where are we?"

"I broke into a house," he says matter-of-factly. "After you went down, I took out the road. I needed to separate us from them, and that was the easiest way to do that. Unfortunately, that also left us trapped here." He smiles at her, all mocking self-deprecation. It would have scared her once. Now it just scares her for whoever pissed him off. "You're stuck with me, sweetheart." 

"Okay," she says. She takes a deep breath, tries to focus. It's harder than she likes, but she puts that down to the throbbing in her head. "Leaving aside the breaking and the entering and the damaging of the city, are we okay?" She sees the gash in his shirt and the red blooming on his chest beneath it. "You're hurt!"

He looks down, makes a face. "It's fine. You're the one with a concussion and possibly hypothermia. Don't worry about me."

"You're no good to me if you bleed out," she says. She reaches for him, tries to spread the fabric wide so she can see the damage better. Her fingers are shaky, though, and she thinks that he might have a point about the hypothermia thing. She is _very_ cold. "Is it bad?"

"Trying to get me naked?" he asks. She can tell he's joking, which tells her how worried he actually is. "All you had to do was ask." 

He stands and pulls his torn and bloody shirt over his head. His broad chest glistens with moisture and she realizes he's been wet to the skin this entire time, that he's where the water that had fallen in her eyes had come from. 

"Rogan! Why aren't you dry?"

He shrugs and sits back down. "Getting you settled seemed more important," he says. "Do you need more blankets? You don't look warm enough." 

"I'm fine," she says, exasperated. "Well, minus the headache. And the cold. You are bleeding and also have to be freezing. Now come here, let me see that."

"I knew this was about getting your hands on me," he says, but he slides closer. He's humoring her, which is another sign of concern. It makes her wonder just how long she was out for. She probably doesn't want to know, not now, not when there's really nothing that can be done.

She touches his chest, using one of the blankets covering her to mop at the blood and the wet. It actually doesn't seem to be that bad, the cut shallow but long. It's in an inconvenient spot, one that probably tears open whenever he moves his arm. But it's not life threatening in anyway and at that, Nevada sighs a sigh of relief. 

"You'll be fine," she says. "Does this house you've burgled have a first aid kit? We should cover it anyway."

"I'm sure they do," he says. "But I didn't want to wander around in the dark, in a stranger's house, anymore than I had to." He grins at her then, all predatorily in a way that she will not let herself acknowledge. "I thought you'd be proud of me. I'm learning boundaries, Nevada."

She will not laugh. Not just because it would hurt. But because it would encourage him and Rogan is not someone that needs encouragement.

"Considering that I'm sure you'll compensate these nice people for the use of their house and the damage to their property, I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you borrowed their first aid kit. And maybe some towels." She frowns at him. "Or I won't be the one in this bed with hypothermia."

"Fine," Rogan says. He stands back up and points a warning finger at her. "Don't move."

She holds her hands up. "I'm not going anywhere."

The instant he's gone, Nevada does move though, peeling the layers of blankets back so that she can assess her own damage more easily. Since she hadn't done it herself, Rogan had obviously stripped her to her bra and underwear before shoving her under the covers. She'd be irritated with him later, but it made this particular task a lot simpler.

Throbbing head. Check. 

Small cuts on her arms. Check. 

An aching shoulder, with what promises to be a spectacular bruise. Check.

Still, the head seems to be the worst of it, well, besides the cold and she alleviates that by pulling the blankets back up to her neck. Nevermind that even with the blankets she was still cold before, some warmth is better than none.

When Rogan comes back in, a towel draped around his neck and a first aid kit in his hands, she's even managed to mostly stop shivering. He frowns when he sees her.

"You moved."

She makes a face up at him. "Barely."

"You moved," he repeats. He sits down next to her, setting the first aid kit on her lap. "What did I tell you?"

She flips the latch open and eyes the contents inside. She selects gauze and tape and scissors, carefully not looking up at him. When she does, finally, his eyes are boring straight into her. What she sees there surprises her.

There's worry, but she expected that. There's rage, and she expected that too. There's helplessness that he'll never admit to, and it warms something in her to know that he cares that much. But what she doesn't expect--and what she doesn't understand--is the guilt.

He's been taking care of her since it happened, to the detriment of his own well-being. What on earth could he have to feel guilty about?

She doesn't answer his question, but begins bandaging the cut on his chest without a word. When she does speak, she says his name, as though it's a question. "Rogan?"

"Yes, Nevada?" he asks, it's almost a purr. 

She looks up and finds his eyes closed, his face slack. He likes this, her hands on his chest. 

Pervert.

_You like it too_ , her conscience reminds her and she presses on. "What happened?"

His eyes open and he looks down at her. "What do you mean? Are you having memory loss?" He moves as if to stand, and she catches his wrist in her hands to stop him.

"I remember fine," she says. "I'm just wondering if there's anything I'm _not_ remembering. Anything you might be feeling guilty about. Even if you shouldn't."

Rogan narrows his eyes at her. "But you don't remember."

"No," she says. "But you do. And I think you should tell me so you'll stop blaming yourself for whatever it is. Because I'm sure it's not your fault that I'm in this bed, Rogan. Let's put that where it belongs, on House Shaw and on mother nature."

"With an assist from me," he says grimly. He lets out a heavy sigh, and this time when he tries to get up she doesn't stop him. She senses this is a pacing kind of moment and sure enough, Rogan starts to do exactly that. "It was my fault."

"What? No," she says. "They threw the projectile at us, Rogan."

"Yes," he agrees, with a nod. "But I'm the one that tried to stop it. I'm the one that diverted it, and that caused the debris that hit you in the head."

She stares at him. 

He stares back.

She stares some more, utterly at a loss for what to say. She doesn't know how to react to this Rogan, the one with actual genuine concern and remorse. Those things don't fit into her neatly labeled mental box called "Rogan," and her her head hurts too much to try to reshape it.

"Aren't you going to say something?" he asks finally. "Threaten to shoot me? Anything?"

"I'm going to thank you," she says. "Rogan, I would have been squashed like a bug by whatever that thing was. Concussion is preferable to death, okay? You did good."

Some of the tension on his face eases and it eases some corresponding thing in her chest. "Yeah?"

"Yes," she says firmly. Before she can stop herself, she lifts the covers on the opposite side of the bed. "Come here."

A slow grin spreads across his face. "Is that an invitation into your bed?"

"For the purposes of sharing body heat _only_ ," she says. "But, yes."

"I don't need to be told twice," Rogan says, and he's in bed next to her before she can take her next breath. 

He settles her against his chest, so gently, like she's some kind of breakable glass. She curls into him, glad of his heat and his presence and of him, though that's nothing she'll be admitting to either of them any time soon.

"Okay?" he asks.

She nods and feels her eyes slip shut. She's so tired and he's so warm, and even though she knows that she should stay awake and alert, she trusts him to watch her back. In a million years, Nevada never would have guessed that would ever happen.

"Sleep," he says, his lips brushing the top of her head. "I've got you."

As she drifts off to sleep, she knows that he does.


End file.
